


lies we tell ourselves

by writerdragonfly



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Pre-Series, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 10:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8708953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerdragonfly/pseuds/writerdragonfly
Summary: Rodney lies to himself about his relationship with John.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mrspadrona](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrspadrona/gifts).



> Prompt at the end. <3  
> I wrote this in the middle of the night with a growing headache, but it seemed to go over on tumblr well. Please enjoy~!

At first, it’s just a little white lie. Something to make it easier to go back into work the morning after. It’s okay, he thinks, I’ll be okay.

As if nothing had happened, as if his world hadn’t been picked up off its axis and thoroughly twisted about until all he knows is that nothing is the same.

The first morning, he thinks later, was the easiest.

He didn’t expect it to happen again.

-x-

John isn’t like the other people he knows. He knows that there are probably a million people who are like John, and he knows that while John is uniquely his own being, there are probably a lot who are just like him.

But they aren’t here, leaning against his front door like he belongs there.

“Hey,” John says, and there’s something in his voice that makes Rodney want to fall to his knees.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” Rodney admits, sliding his key into the door and trying not to think about the heat of John’s body so close to him.

“I can leave,” John says, and Rodney thinks it’s supposed to sound joking but he can hear the hesitation and worry on the edge of every word.

“I didn’t say that,” Rodney says, and pushes John inside.

-x-

He’s never done this before, been so tangled up in someone so quickly and totally.

John whispers exotic equations into his skin and licks paths down his body. He makes references he shouldn’t get and laughs like he’s broken.

He smiles at Rodney like he means something and Rodney’s never been good at understanding what that is.

-x-

He goes to work in the morning with a lie in his head. Just a fling, he thinks, and I’m okay with that.

-x-

“I’ve got to go,” John groans into the skin of his throat, one hand wrapped around the bared skin of Rodney’s hip.

“So hurry up and fuck me,” Rodney says, and it’s a demand that he doesn’t really mean. I didn’t want it slow anyway, he thinks.

-x-

It was just a couple weeks, he thinks, of fun before he went back.

No big deal, he lies to himself.

-x-

“I’ve been offered an incredible opportunity,” Rodney lies into the receiver, staring down at his suitcase with growing dread, “but it’s in Siberia, so I don’t know…”

“Oh,” John says, and it sounds hollow and Rodney hates it.

“I’m sure it won’t be long,” he lies, “I’m needed here too much.”

-x-

He pins John’s postcard of the Nevada desert to the inside of his suitcase. He sees the black ink every time he opens it up in Siberia, slowly fading but still there.

Just something to remind him of home, he thinks, not John.

-x-

“Back in Nevada,” he says into John’s voicemail box.

“Here to stay,” he says, and hopes it’s not a lie.

-x-

“I’ve only got a couple days leave,” John says into his mouth, pressing him against the closed apartment door.

“Mmmhm, I can take a few days off,” Rodney lies, “No one will mind.”

-x-

“I’m thinking about letting my apartment go. I’m not home often enough, even when I’m on leave.”

“Oh,” Rodney says, and then he lies, “that’s a good idea.”

“You don’t mind me staying with you the whole time?” John asks.

“Of course not,” Rodney blurts out, and it’s not a lie at all.

-x-

“I’m being reassigned,” John sighs on the other end of the line. It doesn’t make Rodney’s heart ache, it doesn’t. (It does.)

“Because of…?”

“Yeah,” John says, and he sounds exhausted.

He should sleep. John should sleep.

“Get some sleep, John. I can tell you about what the idiots did later.”

-x-

“I’m, uh, moving locations again,” Rodney admits. John throws his shirt in the pile by the door and falls back on the bed with Rodney.

“Seriously? Can they make up their minds? You’re too smart for this–”

“I wanted this one,” he says, and finds that it’s not a lie, “it’s actually… exactly what I wanted to do.”

“Where are we moving?” John asks, leaning over his chest and digging his bony elbow into Rodney’s side.

“Ahh, I don’t think you can join me, actually.”

“What?” John asks, and he sounds like the last dregs of coffee at the bottom of the pot.

“It’s in Antarctica? I mean, I don’t think it’s exactly somewhere I can say, yes this is my platonic best friend and he’ll be sharing my room while he’s on leave?”

“Oh,” John says, and he sounds like a broken coffee maker.

“But I’ll schedule my time off for your leave,” Rodney says, “and science will wait.”

-x-

Antarctica is silence and loneliness and the cold lingering on his skin.

His room feels like a prison and he doesn’t put his picture of him and John on the nightstand because what if someone knows him?

And he doesn’t stop talking about Samantha Carter because what if someone asks, would he have to tell?

He keeps John’s postcards in his laptop case and keeps checking a cell phone that he knows doesn’t get service.

He writes letters he lies and says he’ll send but doesn’t and writes emails he says he won’t send but does.

It’s not okay to regret the most exciting thing to ever happen to your scholastic journey, he lies to himself, just because you miss him.

-x-

He works and works and doesn’t stay for long in his cramped quarters, doesn’t lie when he thinks about how much he misses their apartment and their cat and the chips that inevitably end up behind the couch cushions.

-x-

Six weeks, he stares at the Nevada landscape scene calendar. Six weeks until the bright red circle is around today.

He’ll be on leave in six weeks.

-x-

“I think I did it!” Beckett exclaims, the tension leaking out of all of them like a burst pipe.

-x-

“Who is this?” Elizabeth asks and Rodney hasn’t left work in two days and he feels like everything in him is about to vibrate out and explode.

“I said don’t touch anything,” O'Neill says and all Rodney can think is, “of course he touched it, he’s John.”

But he lies by omission and doesn’t say that aloud.

“I-I just sat down,” John says and he meets Rodney’s eyes then and they go wide in surprise and joy and…

“Major, think about where we are in the solar system.”

And the room lights up and he should look at the details but all that matters in that instant is this.

John lights it up like a Christmas tree and John is here and he can’t even lie to himself and pretend he is mad that John never told him that he was so close.

Because… Atlantis was the one thing he didn’t want to commit to because Atlantis wouldn’t matter without John. Because he wanted to give up it all for John if John could give up the sky.

And when he meets John’s eyes and the colors reflect in them, Rodney knows.

For once, maybe neither one of them will have to choose.

-x-

Rodney remembers when John first moved in next door, all those years ago.

He flipped a coin as they bonded over Star Trek, and when it came up tails, he leaned over with his beer in one hand and kissed him.

-x-

“Are you going to flip a coin,” Rodney asks him, “decide whether we’re going to Atlantis?”

“No,” John says, smiling at him in his usual lazily happy way, “I already did. And then I kissed you.”

**Author's Note:**

> McShep AU: Rodney’s been at work all day and John’s been deployed. John comes home to surprise Rodney at work.


End file.
